MoreThanNow is an employee owned company.
On June 10th 2025, MoreThanNow became an employee-owned company.
An Employee Ownership Trust now holds the majority of our shares for the benefit of our employees. Our trustees are Priya Gill, James Elfer, and Sarah Ellis, who will work alongside our Managing Director, Katryn Wright. We are excited for our next chapter in applied behavioural science at work!
“MoreThanNow exists to drive change in organisations and uplift working lives. Becoming employee-owned brings us even closer to this mission. I’m excited to continue our learning about how to build employee-centred organisations and improve the world of work. ”
MoreThanNow was founded in 2016 to bring behavioural science to the workplace. For the last 8 years we’ve been pioneering experimental research in organisations, with studies in everything from team dynamics and leadership, to performance management systems and talent identification. We collaborate with academics from institutions including Harvard Business School, INSEAD, Harvard Kennedy School, Chicago Booth and Exeter University. Our work is published in scientific journals and has been promoted in places like Forbes, Business Insider, Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review.
We were free to pursue this uniquely scientific and rigorous model because we were independently owned. We had no pressure to compromise the credibility of our work with growth, and so we knuckled down to refine our new model for workplace change. At this stage, we believe we have proven that experimental methodology is not only possible in the workplace, but can be operationalised as a way to consistently improve decision-making, employee experiences and leadership behaviours. We conduct this work successfully for some of the largest organisations in the world.
We now need to broaden our focus from experimentation to applied science in the workplace, to answer more questions, for more organisations, using more diverse scientific methods. But with that comes a risk that we water-down the model we’ve worked so hard to build and protect. Our employee-ownership model doesn’t offer all the answers, but it means we retain our independence with a team of owners committed to impact through credible science. We are beyond excited to continue our journey under that banner.
Our founder, James Elfer, left these words for the trust, which are written into our constitution:
I've never articulated a vision for MoreThanNow. The closest I’ve come was in an optimistically-titled article from 2017, The Year of Behavioural Science at Work. Looking back, the most enduring words aren't mine, but a quote from Atul Gawande:
“Scientific explanation stands in contrast to the wisdom of experience and common sense. Common sense once told us that the sun moves across the sky and that being out in the cold produced colds. But a scientific mind recognised that these intuitions were only hypotheses. They had to be tested. ”
This thinking wasn't normal in HR and leadership back then, and it's still rare today. When organisations tackle challenges like wellbeing, inclusion, or performance, they typically rely on common sense and hope for the best. And when massive social shocks hit – like the shift to remote work during a global pandemic, or the sudden rise of AI tools – we rarely turn to science for an effective response. I doubt anyone would disagree that we’re all worse off for it.
MoreThanNow was founded to prove a point - that it is possible to use scientific methods to solve organisational challenges, and that this model can be integrated into the way leaders and HR teams make decisions. Rightly or wrongly, we narrowed this mission down to a niche offering: to run large-scale randomised controlled experiments inside organisations. In short, to turn intuitions into hypotheses and put them to the test.
It took almost ten years and a lot of hard graft to get this off the ground, but we did it. We now run portfolios of experiments for some of the world's best-known companies, proving our causal effect in ways few others have managed. Academics we once admired are now our friends and partners. Together, we're contributing to scientific literature while solving thorny, strategic challenges for our partners.
So, what's next? We've built strong foundations over the last decade, and now is the time to use that platform to scale our impact. This is a tricky balance. If we lose our commitment to scientific thinking, we lose everything that makes us special. But if we focus exclusively on experiments for the largest organisations, we limit the questions we can answer, the value we can bring, and the diversity of scientific methods we can apply.
Your challenge as an employee-owned company is to navigate these waters, as I believe only an independent company can do. To that end, I have a couple of guiding words to help steer your way:
All good science is underpinned by intellectual humility and curiosity. Wherever MoreThanNow goes and whatever services you offer, keep these values at your core. Your intuitions are, after all, only hypotheses. They have to be put to the test.
My wish for us has always been, in order of priority: to have nice lives, to do work we're proud of, and to be part of a growing business. When trade-offs arise – and they will – do not sacrifice the quality of your life for your work, and do not sacrifice the quality of your work for commercial success.
MoreThanNow tackles workplace challenges using scientific thinking and methods. Ask us how we can help solve your latest priority: